How to Start A Successful Career in Cloud Engineering
By Bryan Bleil, SVP, GM of Technology at inSpring
One of the largest revolutions in 21st century technical architecture is The Cloud – a delivery architecture that allows dynamic scaling of computer processing, where the specific location of the computers is fundamentally irrelevant. This is where the term “cloud” comes from; the idea is that no one (no company, no customer, no developer) should ever have to worry about “where” computing resources are located. Instead, computing resources in the Cloud are dynamically available whenever and wherever they are needed at any moment.
It's a revolution in the delivery of online anything, and has already transformed whole sectors of the economy (especially where those businesses need reliable, online delivery of stores, services or other products). Easy examples of this can be found in any commercial online shopping site (Amazon, Zappos, Shopify, etc), but what you may not realize is that many other industries have moved their online operations to the cloud as well (such as General Motors, Bank of America, Cigna and UnitedHealth). So how can a savvy, technically minded student start planning his or her career path into this industry, which Gartner research estimates will grow another 20% in 2023, to a global market of nearly $502 Billion?
First, let’s think about the different types of jobs that help serve and build cloud infrastructures. Simply put, there are two categories of technical-track jobs: 1) Those that only require strong technical skills (such as Cloud of DevOps engineering roles); and 2) Those that require both technical and also “soft” or professional skills (for customer-facing jobs such as Cloud Architects, Cloud Sales Engineers, and Cloud Customer Support Engineers). The key question for students coming out of university and beginning their careers really comes down to this: Do you prefer to work on your own or with a team or other technical experts, or would you rather a job that lets you interface with customers, teams, and other people?
While I was with Amazon Web Services (AWS), the Tech U training program provided a great opportunity to discover what skills were especially important to those starting out their early technical careers. Here is a quick summary of those lessons. The technical skills needed for these different types of jobs are fundamentally similar: you’ll want to build your new career based on solid programming skills (example languages that will help include: Python, Java, C/C++, and SQL). But you’ll also want to broaden your technical literacy to also include general cloud architecture principles, database and data pathway management, and cloud security strategies. There are also several platform-specific certifications that will greatly enhance your resume: AWS, Microsoft, and Google (the three largest cloud providers) all have specific certifications for their services. These can be a critical addition to a resume, especially if you are targeting jobs within companies that have already chosen one of those specific providers of cloud services.
If you are also interested in a customer- or other people-facing technical role, you’ll want to think about how to enhance your technical skills with additional professional skills (sometimes called “soft skills” or “people skills”), for working effectively with customers (both technical and non-technical). Cloud Architects are a perfect example of the value of having strengths in both skillsets – architects (also sometimes referred to as “sales engineers”) play a critical role in helping companies and technical teams make the migration into cloud services. These roles typically provide expert technical consulting, as well as general cloud education, to the technical teams within customer organizations who will be responsible for implementing and maintaining the company’s new cloud infrastructure. To succeed, you’ll not only need strong technical chops around cloud architecture, but you’ll also need the people skills to work with and manage both technical and also business needs.
And here’s a quick “pro-tip” for you – even if you don’t think you want a career path that will be customer-facing, those same people skills will still be important for your advancement into management and leadership roles, even in purely technical roles. So really, we can all benefit from honing in on our professional skills.
Whichever way you go, there is big opportunity for technically-minded talent to launch a cloud career in the next few years. Starting salaries even for entry-level roles typically begin at $90K to $130K, depending on the role and specialized skills required. But one caution for those interested in a cloud career – expect that you will need to continue to learn new and different skills, as cloud technical architectures continue to grow and improve as the cloud providers like Amazon, Microsoft and Google continue to drive new technologies and products into an industry that continues to be one of the richest sources of technical innovation for the global economy.
Bryan Bleil has led educational technology programs from the early days of CD-ROM-based software titles to large-scale network and online products, and through it all has led the introduction of innovative, tech-based ways to improve the learning experience of everyone from kindergartners to entry-level adults looking to use technology to improve the world. Bryan has helped find and place hundreds of international talent into highly-compensated career paths in technology-based roles. In doing so, he has developed a keen understanding of the critical skills and attributes that help individuals succeed in their chosen technical career paths and the foundational skills critical for such talent to build and grow the business objectives of the organizations for which they will join and contribute to.